On Saturday, we received half an inch of rain, which isn’t great weather when you are planning on roofing.  We’ve learned to roll with the punches, so we made our way inside and began the messiest job yet.  Fortunately, this wasn’t a job I was able to help with.  Ryan and Dad agreed, this was the worst job so far.

Warning:  If you ever decide to tear down plaster and slats in a house you are living in, be prepared to have dust everywhere.  It doesn’t matter how well you seal off that area, it will get into everything.

We have had an eyesore in our house since we moved in: the stairway.  We have brightened it up quite a bit with new windows, but it still needs a lot of work.

 

With the bright pink wallpaper, it just wasn’t doing our house much justice.  Besides the looks, we also had a major ice problem on this wall last winter and we suspected that there wasn’t any insulation in the stairway.  We had some huge icicles which resulted in water running underneath our siding.

 

 

Now comes the mess!  After tearing out a lot of slat walls, we have discovered that you should scrape the plaster off first and deal with the slats later.  If you pull at the slats while the plaster is still on, you will have a much bigger mess.

In case you were wondering, this is what a stairway looks like when you tear down all of the plaster on the walls:

 

In the past, we bagged plaster into garbage bags and brought it to the dump that way.  This time, the guys just shoveled it into a wheel-barrel and put it directly onto the trailer going to the dump.  I can’t tell you how much money we have saved because we haven’t rented a dumpster.  It’s a bit more work, but has really paid off.

(Another lesson learned: it is very hard to take good pictures with this much dust in the air!)

After that mess, it looks much better, and we can start thinking about drywall (another messy job).

On the bright side, we found out why we had such an ice problem.  The ceiling in the stairway in on an angle because of the roof.  That area didn’t have any insulation, so heat was traveling up the stairway and right out the roof!  The rest of the attic is well insulated, so adding insulation here should make a big difference.

We were also able to work on the chicken run this weekend, so I’m hoping I can post Part 3 of my chicken coop series later this week, so check back soon!  Thanks for reading!